THE STIR IN LITERATURE.
Of course the most important event of the month in this favored part of the world is the unheralded advent of such a robust youngster as the Fly Leaf. Oh yes, thank you, Mrs. Grundy, we are doing very well indeed—a very healthy and vigorous infant and a favorite already; and we may be able to show a very pretty set of teeth in a month or two, if occasion should demand. Some of our distinguished contemporaries will perceive the delicacy of this metaphor; albeit the babe is quite good-natured.
And now a few words about the aims and purposes of the Fly Leaf will be in order—and the incidental commentary may be found to be equally interesting. For the Fly Leaf, although but the bantling of yesterday, has been nursed in the lap of harsh experience, and is at least as wise as some drivelling and decrepit contemporaries it finds lagging superfluous on the stage.
It is true that the field of contemporary journalism is already fairly well stocked with various periodicals, of various shades of unprovoked domesticity, and innocuous intention in the way of imparting that miscellaneous misinformation, which is the mental stock-in-trade of the millions everywhere, and put into print day after day, is the most effective bar to tolerance and growth and hospitality of thought. But there is plenty of room for the Fly Leaf. These highly respectable publications are all competing with each other, and reaping the rich rewards that are the portion of those who have invested their capital in the impossible virtues and spotless innocence of the Young Person. They are all reported to be very prosperous, and we cannot bring ourselves to believe so highly of human nature in the bulk as to doubt the truth of their returns.
But the Fly Leaf will occupy a field that all these periodicals regard with the suspicion of conservatism. It will not impinge on their field, and they cannot by any possibility intrench upon its. For it is a magazine of the New, the Modern, the Young Man, the Young Woman, Today and its stirring, probing, fantastical spirit.
With the immense reading public that exists in this land of popular education and enlightenment—a public which expands every year, as generation after generation takes its place in the ranks of life—there is room for all sorts of periodicals; and instead of these various periodicals being in rivalry, they actually raise up new readers for each other. Even the old fogy magazines have helped to prepare the way for honest bubbling thought and fancy and humor. They have unwittingly and unwillingly educated their readers for the Fly Leaf. The more literature is cultivated in America—the more writers with fresh opinions and experiences and ideas increase—the more readers there will be to encourage the treatment of ever new and wider aspects of the complex life of this vast and complex aggregation of people.
In the pages of these respectable domestic periodicals, old-fashioned folk, who lived before thought was let loose in the English tongue among respectable, law-abiding people, and who linger on to the confusion of poetry and new ideas and new interests, can still doze over profound articles on “How to Cook a Beefsteak” and fiction that has even less relevance to the comedy and tragedy of real modern life. But all inspiring literature is drenched in the spirit and vigor of Youth—even though the writers may be only belated boys. It is the New in eternal nature that entrances the imaginations of thinkers and poets. The day is coming when the periodicals now devoted to the dissemination of the platitudes and ideas of two or three generations ago will have to awaken to the fact that the Young Man and the Young Woman of this era demand the heart of life in their literature, or they will be compelled to give way to bolder spirits, such as are now gathering strength in every modern literature. Already the tide has set in. Hence the Fly Leaf.
The Fly Leaf belongs to this end of the century. It is essentially modern. It does not look to the future, however, with any affected fin de siecle weariness or ennui, but with the hopefulness and stirring courage of youth. It does not aim to be Decadent, or pin its faith to any particular Ism; although it will always be hospitable to art and beauty and truth from any quarter.
The Editor and his coadjutors are of the new school of younger writers, and they aim to unite free sincere thought with humor and fantastic whimsies and imagination; to be serious and amusing; earnest and honest; but never dull. The underlying purpose and inspiration of our efforts will be to strike this Modern note and awaken this broader Modern spirit, which marks the literature of our era off from all the ancient thought and literature of the world.
The Fly Leaf will deal with the Here and Now, with the aims and ideals of the Young Man and the Young Woman, with the drift and tendencies of American social and literary thought. It will embody the New Spirit of the age that is moving the literature of all the world, but it will be distinctively an American periodical.
The Fly Leaf hopes that in this struggle for the recognition of this broader spirit in criticism and the material of literature, and for the encouragement of American writers of ability, it will receive the cordial support of the younger generation of readers throughout the country.